


Your Turn

by Masu_Trout



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Fix-It of Sorts, Post-Canon, Sacrifice Chloe Ending, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-24 06:44:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9708926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masu_Trout/pseuds/Masu_Trout
Summary: Chloe dies. The storm takes Arcadia Bay. And Max—Max tries again.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [prosodiical](https://archiveofourown.org/users/prosodiical/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy this!

Frank doesn't get kicked out of Chloe's funeral, which is to say he slips away all on his own the moment he catches David's eye. It's a good plan, Max thinks, because right now David looks like he'd be willing to fight just about anyone and Frank makes a more reasonable target than most.

Max doesn't follow, obviously. She's got her priorities, and the asshole drug-dealer she kinda-sorta pitied near the end of it all doesn't even rank on a good week.

(This is not a good week.)

Max stays with Chloe's coffin and holds Joyce's hand while the pastor talks about redemption. Her body manages to force a little more out of the bone-dry reservoir that used to be her tear ducts. She doesn't think of Frank and his shitty tattoos and his hangdog expression at all.

Still, though, when the burial is finally over and all the guests filter out of the graveyard, she somehow finds herself making her way over to his RV.

Frank gives her a suspicious sort of look as she approaches. Max bristles, ready to snap back at him— _I never actually shot you, asshole, give me a break already_ —when it hits her. None of that ever happened; he doesn't know her from any other student at Blackwall. Deja vu keeps hitting her at weird moments, but none of them are stranger than these: walking up to someone and realizing she doesn't have the slightest clue what to say to them, not because she doesn't know them but because she knows them too well.

No clever one-liners come to mind, so she just gives him an awkward little nod. “Hey.”

“Hey yourself.” He snorts. “You some cousin or something?”

“No, nothing like that. Just… a friend, I guess.”

He looks her up and down. “Didn't think Chloe had any friends at Blackwell anymore. But I guess a fair few of you kids showed up anyway, didn't you?” The scorn in his voice is obvious, and it pisses Max off. As if he had any sort of connection to Chloe that didn't involve money, drugs, or Rachel Amber.

She doesn't want to start a fight in a parking lot, though, so instead she just shrugs. “Most of them were my friends. They're good people—they wanted to help Joyce and David out.”

She doesn't know why, but some of the anger in his face drains away at her words. “Makes sense, I guess. It's been a bad week.” He pulls out a cigarette, looks at it for a moment, then slides it back into the carton and tucks it away. 

Max tries her best not to laugh and mostly succeeds. “Yeah.” 

Understatement of—well, of the week. Every iteration of it.

“It's weird,” he grunts, “all this shit going down with… with you fuckin' Blackwell kids”—with Chloe and Nathan and Rachel Amber, she hears him not say, because if the police are sniffing around he's probably trying his best to pretend he never knew a one of them—“and the thing that's really been fucking with me is the stench. Had to move my RV 'cause my dog can't stand it.”

“The stench?” Max asks. His RV smelled godawful, she remembers that well enough, but that can't be what he's talking about.

Frank snorts. “Of the whales. They're too big to drag away, and no one's worried about _animal_ bodies right now, so. They're just rotting away down there.”

“Oh,” Max says, and then: “oh _shit_.”

–

Arcadia Bay is unmade again that night. 

Max turns off her phone, locks her dorm room door, and watches the storm approach. The wind howls like a monster as it whips through the streets. The rain's coming down so hard it's nearly horizontal. Every so often a flash of lightning streaks through the clouds, followed by a peal of thunder that's too close to count.

It's—as bad as it was before. Worse, maybe. She can't really tell with something _this_ massive.

She knows she won't be able to keep any of it, but she snaps a few photos anyway. Habit.

Her first thought is of Jefferson's class—which, hella not what she wants to be remembering now, thanks, brain. But there was this one lecture, only a few days after she made it into to Blackwell, where he sat them down and talked all about _perspective_.

Simulate a shallow depth of field to make a great landscape look miniscule, set up forced perspective to make something close to the camera look giant instead. It's the oldest branch of special effects out there.

“Photography is the art of telling truth through trickery,” Max says to her empty room, hearing the echoes of Jefferson's voice in the back of her mind. She remembers scribbling that line down in her notebook like the words themselves were sacred. Now, she can't decide whether it sounds more pretentious or pathetic.

The problem is that she has no perspective. Is the storm growing, shrinking, staying the same? If it's not growing, then she can try again and again as many times as she can think of something new to try; the only thing at stake is her sanity, and that one's starting to feel like a lost cause already. But if it's getting bigger… 

If it's getting bigger, then the best thing she can do for everyone is to just give up now. Better she takes out Arcadia Bay than the whole Western seaboard.

Max sighs as she turns to rummage through the photographs on her desk. It's hard to see what's what with the electricity gone out. Her phone screen is the only source of light in the room apart from the occasional flash of lightning. 

The picture of the butterfly is at the bottom of a thin stack of pictures she doesn't recognize, most of them blurry and unfocused: a row of police cars lined up outside Blackwell, Nathan's now-empty locker, a few in a row of the view outside her dorm room. Apparently she didn't feel like working on her art much this week. Big surprise there.

The sorts of tricks photographers use don't work in real life; a photograph is a flat surface. In the real world, you can reorient yourself, change your point of view. It's exactly what Max needs to do now, just… on a different scale.

“One more time,” Max promises herself. She grips the picture tight, stares down at it, and _focuses_.

–

Max opens her eyes to the dull tile of her least-favorite bathroom in Blackwell. Her head is pounding and her mouth feels fuzzy, but—she raises a hand to her face to check—her nose isn't bleeding. That's one good sign, at least.

The world of the photograph still feels strange around the edges. Soft white light filters from everywhere at once; nearby, she can hear voices raised in argument. 

_Chloe_ , she realizes suddenly, and lurches away from the wall. She's got no plan, no idea what she's going to say or do. All she wants is to see Chloe again.

“Stop,” Max says, stepping out from alcove. “You can't—”

And that's when Nathan shoots her in the head.

The world twists into stark monochrome around her. The bullet digs into her flesh, hanging in the air a fraction of a centimeter away from drilling through her skull and into her brain.

Max sighs. That one was probably technically her fault, if only for forgetting just how _goddamn insane_ Nathan Prescott is. Slowly, carefully, she raises her right hand and pulls time backwards until the bathroom is empty once more.

(For a moment she stops to wonder what would happen if she _didn't_ rewind; could she even manage to kill herself if she wanted to, or would she just end up frozen in that colorless world forever? It's—well, it's nothing that she needs to worry about now.)

“Okay.” She takes a steadying breath, then slips back around the divider before Nathan has a chance to walk into the bathroom once more. “Let's do this.”

This time she waits, listening closely, as Nathan rambles to himself about control and blowing up the school. When the bathroom door opens with a soft _click_ her heart constricts—but running out there right now will just get herself or Chloe killed. (Again.) She needs to time this right.

Only a few feet away, the argument is heating up.

“Leave them out, of this, _bitch_ ,” Nathan snarls. Max can't see Chloe, but she can imagine the way she looks right now: tall and confident, pressing into his space, never giving an inch. Arrogant. Brave. 

“I can tell them Nathan is a punk ass who begs like a little girl—” Chloe starts, then leaps backward with a startled shout as Max slams into Nathan from behind.

His elbows crack against the tile when he drops to the floor. The gun skitters out from its loose hold in his jacket, tumbling end over end until it bumps to a halt at Max's shoe.

“What?” Chloe asks, and then, “ _Max?_ ”

“The _fuck_ ,” Nathan adds in a pained wheeze. 

Before either of them can react, Max scoops the gun up. It's warm and heavy in her hand and it feels familiar. The safety is off—no surprise there—and she considers a moment before leaving it. If she accidentally shoots someone she can just go back; it's better than giving Nathan ideas about what he might be able to get away with.

She swings the muzzle towards him when he starts to get up. “Don't even try it.”

Nathan freezes, Adam's apple bobbing as he swallows. “I won't—I won't do anything, okay? Just don't—just don't fucking shoot me, God, it's not me, I didn't even want to come here, it's _that_ bitch there who made me come. If you're gonna go after anyone, it should be her.”

“Shut up!” Chloe snaps. She glances over at Max, her eyes full of suspicion and fear, and says, “seriously, Max, it's not what it looks like, okay? You can put the gun down.”

“I…” Max knows what exactly what this must look like: she disappeared from Chloe's life for years, only to show up in the bathroom during a supposedly-secret meeting waving a gun at everyone. There's no way Chloe wouldn't be freaking out.

Still, it hurts. She wants to remind Chloe about the train, the break-in, the storm—but none of that's happened yet, has it? None of it ever happened at all.

Shit. Now really isn't the time for this. The storm still feels so close, held at bay only by the borders of this strange not-quite-reality. The scent of ozone and saltwater clings to her.

Max doesn't know what to say—she's been winging it this whole week, and right now all she can think about is not letting Chloe die _again_. Chloe was the mastermind, the one with the big ideas for everything Max's powers might be able to do.

 _Well,_ Max thinks, _she's here now, isn't she? Tell her._

She opens her mouth and what comes out is, “Rachel Amber's buried in the junkyard.”

“What?” Chloe snaps. “That's—Max, that's hella sick, what the fuck are you even talking about?” She grabs the edge of the sink with white-knuckled fingers.

Goddammit. That's not—that's not the _problem_ right now, that's not anything Max can fix, and anyway that's probably the worst possible way For Chloe to find out. Max steps forward, reaching out instinctually to comfort her.

A moment too late, she remembers to look down. Nathan's mouth is caught in an inhuman snarl of fear and rage; he lunges at her like an animal, eyes wide and vacant. 

He grabs for the gun—

She pulls away—

Chloe stumbles backwards as a _crack_ sounds through the air—

Max brings her hand up and pulls time to a halt. Bad plan. _Hella_ bad plan.

She swallows, feeling every bit as trapped as the frozen figures around her. It wasn't going too badly to start with; she just needs to tweak things a little. With shaking fingers, she pulls them all back to the moment just before she told Chloe the truth.

“I don't want to shoot anyone,” she says instead, looking Chloe dead in the eyes. “I don't want anyone to get hurt today.

She turns her attention to the person at her feet. “Nathan.”

“I'm listening,” he says after a moment. His voice is shaking and his breath rattles in his lungs.

“Go over to the corner of the bathroom and lay on the ground with your hands over your head.”

Nathan hesitates, glancing between her face and the gun. “If you hurt me… my dad _owns_ this school, you know that?”

It's a low blow, but Max can't stop the words from slipping out: “If he owns Blackwell, I wonder why he can't stop people from _disappearing_?”

A whole-body shudder runs through Nathan. He half-stands, keeping as far away from her as he can, then moves to the corner of the room without another word.

Once he's far enough away, Max shifts the gun to her off hand and slips her phone out of her pocket. No need to look up David's phone number this time; she knows it by heart now. She'd ended up texting him and Joyce almost constantly in the time leading up to the funeral, offering to pick up flowers and notify people and organize the house—they'd been grateful for any little help that might give them a second more to grieve in peace.

The old standby will have to do, since she can't think of anything more to tell him: _Mr. Madsen. Rachel Amber is buried in the junkyard, killed by Mark Jefferson. His hideout is under the Prescotts' farmhouse. He's sick and DANGEROUS!!!_ —she adds the exclamation points after a moment's thought, remembering that fight in the Dark Room— _He needs to be stopped._.

She hits send and slides her phone back into her pocket, then looks up to see Chloe glaring at her. “Why are you texting right now?” Her frown deepens. “Or would _who_ be the better question?”

There's no explanation that wouldn't sound unbelievable, so Max just shrugs. “That's not important. I need to talk to you.”

“With a gun pointed at my face? I bet you do.”

It's all Max can do not to laugh at that; it's just so _Chloe_. Sharp-tongued in the face of overwhelming danger, clever and caustic even when nothing makes sense. Max never even realized how much she loved that about her. 

Carefully, she slides the safety back into place, then releases the magazine and lets it hit the ground. Bullets spill across the floor with a metallic rattle. Max isn't quite sure how to make sure there's nothing left in the chamber still—gun safety, more relevant to her life than she ever would have expected—so she just chucks the whole thing at the toilet nearest her, misses, rewinds, and lands it in the bowl.

“There,” she says. “No more gun.”

The tension bleeds slowly out of Chloe's form. “Okay,” she says, “Yeah, we can talk. But I have to say, this is a _hella_ weird entrance to make after so long gone.”

This time, Max does laugh. “Trust me, you don't know the half of it.”

“So tell me, then, Max, what's all this about?” Chloe gives her a quick once-over. “How did you know I'd be here?”

“I didn't. Or, well”—she did this time around, technically, but—“It was an accident.”

“Right,” Chloe says flatly.

“Look, there's not much time. In a little while I'm not going to remember doing any of this, so you have to listen closely. There's a storm coming, a big one.” Max shudders, caught for the moment in the memory. “Bigger than anything you've ever seen before. I don't know what's causing it or why it's happening here, but—you can't do anything to stop it. No matter what you might think.”

“Max, you're acting hella crazy right now. You hit your head or something?”

Frustration gnaws at her. There's no time for guessing games or little fortune teller predictions to prove herself right now, not when the photo's world could end at any moment. 

But she knows Chloe, doesn't she? She can still rely on that.

“On the wall of your secret hideout, there's a dartboard,” Max says. “Rachel beat you thirteen games to four. The song she left you was _Santa Monica Dream_ —it still reminds you of her, right? And you keep a box of things she left you hidden under your bed.”

Chloe's mouth snaps shut and she takes a stuttering breath. “You…”

 _Please,_ Max thinks, _please let her believe me_. She's not sure who she's even asking—god or destiny or Rachel Amber—but she begs with all her might nonetheless.

“Okay,” Chloe says. Her eyes flicker closed. When they open again, they're filled with all the focus and drive that Max remembers so well. “Let's assume, for a moment, that you haven't become some creepy stalker since I saw you last. Tell me about the storm.”

 _Thank you,_ Max thinks. She opens her mouth and the words pour out.

She tells Chloe about the omens—the snow, the eclipse, the dead animals, the twin moons in the sky. She explains the might of the storm as best she can; pictures are her domain, not words, but she puts every bit of herself into the telling. She skirts carefully around any details that might raise more questions than she can answer. A failure, she's sure—there's nothing about any of this that doesn't raise questions—but Max does her best to keep focused. All the while, she's conscious of time ticking by. This brief moment, frozen by the camera's flash, won't last forever.

Finally, when she's said all she can think to say, she reaches out and touches Chloe's arm. 

“Please.” She knows how desperate she sounds and yet she's unable to stop herself. “No matter what else happens, safe yourself. Even if you can't convince anyone else… you can get out alive. I might not remember this soon, but I'll believe you and I'll help you.”

“I don't…” Chloe wraps her hand over Max's like it's a lifeline. “I don't understand. What's going on? How is any of this happening?”

“I don't know,” Max says honestly. The white light has started tearing through the bounds of reality now, the way it always does when a photo's moment comes to end. It dissolves Nathan and the corners of the bathroom in its glow and heads her way.

Time's up, then. And there's still one more thing Max has to say.

Max leans in, close enough to brush her lips against Chloe's, close enough to feel her vibrant pulse and the warmth of her skin.“I love you,” she says, and, “good luck.”

In the next moment, the light surrounds her. Sensation drops away as time itself cocoons around her once more. Max relaxes and lets the flow carry her forward once more. Time to see what sort of future she's made.

(No, that's not right at all. It's time to see what sort of future _Chloe's_ made.

When she thinks of it that way, it doesn't seem so scary at all.)


End file.
